Lassiter 4

by Peter McCurtin

  “They want to be sure before coming out in the open. By the time they’re sure we won’t need their help. Maybe we’ll need it for a while. We’ll take their money and their guns and their support, then tell them to go frig themselves. We’ll pull a switch on Mr. Dowling.”

  Maybe, Lassiter thought. Or maybe Dowling will do the switching. “You’re the general, Mac,” he said, deciding, finally, that now was the time to resign his commission in McCain’s Army. After Ringo Junction, no matter what happened, he was heading south.

  McCain went back behind the table and sat down. He told Colmar to get the money packed away. He sent the half-breed to the mess hall for food. McCain took a folded sheet of map paper from his inside pocket, spread it out on the table, and started digging at it with the bayonet he used as a pointer.

  The map was simple—the principal streets of the town blocked off in ink, with crisscrossed lines representing the railroad lines coming in from three sides.

  Two big X’s marked the depot and the militia barracks.

  “Ringo Junction is about seventy miles from here,” McCain said. “We don’t have much time, but we’ll make it if we move fast.”

  The point of the bayonet moved away from the X marking the railroad depot. It followed the rails going north from the town. McCain stabbed at another, smaller X. “This—this here—is the next town—Caribou City—forty miles to the north. The train with the guns is due in Ringo Junction at noon on Friday of this week. Early in the morning a small force of men will attack Caribou City. There are mines there so the town is important. Important enough, we hope, to draw the main force of militia away from the junction. They will move north to Caribou City by train. One of the special trains our friend Cameron is assigning to all key points. Another small force of men—just a few—will dynamite the tracks behind them when they get close to Caribou City.”

  McCain laughed without making a sound. “They will hurry back to Ringo Junction as fast as they can walk. After the first twenty miles they won’t be walking so fast. By the time they return to Ringo Junction, footsore and fierce, we will have vanished with the guns. Any questions?”

  No questions from Lassiter. None from the Indian.

  “Good,” McCain commended them. “We move out at sunrise tomorrow. After we get the guns we will move to a new strong point to be discussed later.”

  Lassiter walked back to his quarters across the parade ground. The men were still drilling. They hadn’t been told yet. The poor bastards, Lassiter thought without much pity.

  He lay down on the dirty mattress, a bottle in one hand, the .45 in the other. After a while drinking and listening to the poor bastards drilling until it got dark, he fell asleep.

  Chapter Nine

  The room, when he woke up, was completely dark. Instinctively, he knew it was about an hour before dawn. He had gone to sleep on top of the blankets, and now he was chilled right through. At first he thought it was the cold that woke him. The bottle lay beside him on the narrow cot. The gun, the trigger finger outside the guard, was still in his hand.

  It wasn’t the cold, he knew suddenly. There was somebody—something—in the room. There was no movement, no breathing he could hear, but it was there. Standing rock still in the darkness, more solid than darkness, unable to see him, but waiting.

  Lassiter didn’t move, but he forced his chest to move up and down in the short, light motions of a sleeping man. Not moving the first time, he could wait as long as he had to. The man in the darkness was breathing through his mouth. Lassiter couldn’t hear it—he could feel it. The gun lay easy in his unclenched hand. He didn’t even move the trigger finger inside the guard, the thumb to the hammer.

  The unseen bulk didn’t move, didn’t make a sound, not at first, but Lassiter got the sense of movement, of a big man getting ready to move, the muscles tensing in the arms and thighs. Lassiter knew it was Baptiste even before his brain told him that’s who it was. Then he smelled Baptiste—the smell of the huge half-breed was unmistakable. He didn’t smell it at first because the big half-breed hadn’t been in the cold room long enough. Now the dirty, silent breath of the half-breed seemed to fill the room, and the heat of the huge, dirty body came strongly through the darkness.

  McCain—the dirty Irish bastard, Lassiter thought.

  Still he didn’t move. Nothing happened for a while. A minute went by—maybe less, maybe more. If Lassiter had been on his feet he would have fired two shots fast, then used the light from the flashes to shoot right. But he was on his back and the half-breed knew exactly where he was—and he wasn’t sure.

  He expected the half-breed to come at him one slow step at a time, one soft moccasin put over the other until the big man reached the side of the bed. Another thing—the half-breed was closer than he thought. When the half-breed moved—when he moved finally—he came at Lassiter all at once. The bulk that Lassiter couldn’t see moved through the darkness with astonishing speed, and the rigidly held knife blade stabbed down so fast it made a hissing sound in the cold air. Lassiter didn’t have time to shoot, couldn’t see to shoot. He jerked the top of his head upward, taking the half-breed squarely in the face. There was a grunt, and they struggled, Lassiter fighting like a mad man under the half-breed’s stinking bulk, the half-breed stunned by the blow. The half-breed stabbed again, and Lassiter’s gun barrel slapped him three times on the side of the skull. Lassiter felt the chill of the knife on the outside of his shoulder muscle. One hand stopped the knife before it could stab again, the other slammed the heavy .45 against the big man’s skull. The half-breed blew his filthy breath in Lassiter’s face, and the knife came loose in his hand. The half-breed cursed—or prayed— in French. Lassiter got the knife and turned it, stabbing upward. He felt it go in, the double-edged blade sliding smoothly through heavy flesh. He jerked the blade back and stabbed again and again—and again.

  Slick with blood, Lassiter heaved the dead half-breed off the bed, and stood up. The knife was still tight in his hand. He threw it away and fumbled in his pants pocket for matches. The first match he got was too slick with blood from his fingers. He got a second one, and it sizzled and caught fire. Across the floor to the hanging oil lamp. Lassiter shoved up the globe and lit the wick. The wick was bent, and it burned smoky, oily, threatening to break the globe. Lassiter, still gasping, turned to look at what the half-breed had tried to do—and he had done himself to the dead half-breed.

  After he got his gun and wiped the blood off it, as much blood as he could reach with the bunched up blanket, he trimmed the lamp before the glass chimney blackened up completely and broke. It sure as hell had been a quiet killing. There was no chair in the room, so Lassiter ripped the top blanket, then the bottom blanket, off the bed and sat down on the edge of the dirty, mildewed mattress.

  The half-breed lay on his face on the floor with a wide puddle of blood leaking out from under him. A bottle stuck out from a side pocket of his dirty wool coat. Lassiter reached down, uncorked it, smelled it, made a face. He made a worse face when he tasted it. He thought he could drink anything but not this northwoods moonshine. He didn’t drink it because his own bottle, quarter full, was lying unbroken on the floor.

  After the second drink he turned down the wick and rolled himself a smoke. Sherman said war was hell, he thought, putting a match to it, but then Sherman had never been in a rebellion in British Columbia. Lassiter finished the bottle, looked at what was left in the dead half-breed’s bottle, and, telling himself he was no better than a dirty half-breed killer, he finished that, too.

  He wanted more whiskey. Too much wasn’t enough for Lassiter, but he forced himself out into the cold pre-dawn darkness, to wash the blood off at the horse trough. He heard the sentries walking the walls—walking what was left of the guard-platforms behind the walls. The sentries made more noise than they should have, or maybe sentries were supposed to make noise and get shot at first. Lassiter couldn’t remember what sentries had to do except get shot first.

  Lassiter’s ou
ter coat was canvas treated with boot oil. The blood washed off that fast, the shirt underneath was still sticky and blood-smelling, likely to stiffen up and smell worse when it dried out. Lassiter went inside and changed his shirt, and while he was doing that the bugle blew.

  The dirty Irish bastard, Lassiter thought, hair dripping, wanting more whiskey. Why not? Give the Irish bastard a shock! Lassiter dragged, shoved and pushed the dead half-breed under the bed.

  McCain was out in the parade ground yelling. The Irishman’s voice sounded out of the weakening darkness—loud, not strong, but loud enough, and steady.

  “Up, lads!” McCain was yelling.

  Lassiter opened the door. Like the other doors, it faced on to the inside parade ground. Lassiter had never yelled “Up, lads” in his life. Now he yelled it:

  “Up, lads!”

  The men began to turn out. McCain turned to Lassiter and told him there were a few things to go over in his office. Lassiter didn’t entirely know how to take the Irishman. There still wasn’t much light, but McCain was looking at him hard.

  McCain wasn’t at his best that early in the morning. It wasn’t the only time of day when things—maybe himself—got under his skin. He was muttering to himself when Lassiter followed him inside. “Where the hell is that son of a bitch?” McCain complained.

  “You mean Baptiste?” Lassiter said, closing the door behind them. He kept his hand close to the butt of the .45. The Irishman was a dead shot with a pistol once it was in his hands, but he wasn’t fast getting it out of the holster. Like a snake, he had to get set to strike. Lassiter didn’t mean to give him a chance to get set.

  McCain turned, his face irritable and blotchy. As an actor he was pretty convincing, Lassiter decided—if that’s what he was doing. “You seen him?”

  Lassiter stayed still. “Sure,” he said. “I killed him a minute ago.”

  McCain had been grinding one hand against the other. The hands stopped grinding, became motionless. They didn’t stray even a little bit toward the .44 Remington in the unbuttoned over-flap holster. The sleepy peskiness went out of McCain’s pale eyes He said easily:

  “You don’t say.”

  Lassiter didn’t see that he had to explain the circumstances of the half-breed’s death. He did it anyway—he could be wrong, not about McCain generally, but about this. He made it short and ugly, the way it was.

  He grinned, gun ready to come out and kill. “’Course you wouldn’t know anything about that. Old Baptiste just took it into his head to relieve me of my ten thousand dollars. Not because anybody told him to. For money reasons and other reasons, I mean.”

  Out on the parade ground the men were getting ready to move. Lassiter recognized Colmar s voice, Bannerman’s, too. It was a big day for what Lassiter now thought of as McCain’s Rebellion. It was a big day for McCain. It would certainly be his last big day, if he didn’t answer right. Or if he decided that pulling that .44 was the answer he wanted to give.

  McCain wasn’t scared, and he wasn’t offended. By now he knew Lassiter enough to know what was in his mind. The Irishman wasn’t the kind of professional Lassiter respected and understood. But he was a professional in his own way.

  “If you think that, why don’t you shoot?” he said. He wasn’t pleading, just explaining. The hands started rubbing again. They stayed away from the gun. “If I wanted to kill you, Lassiter, I’d do it myself. I guess I owe you that much. Don’t think I haven’t thought about killing you—that I might have to kill you someday because you don’t know what we’re trying to do here and don’t care, and men like that don’t fit in anywhere—but I didn’t send Baptiste to kill you.”

  “You sent him to kill Papineau.”

  “Papineau was a fool. Papineau would have been in the way. What do you care about Papineau?”

  “Not a thing,” Lassiter said. “I care about me.”

  McCain said, “Make up your mind. What’s it going to be? We have work to do—a long ride ahead—and not much time to do it.”

  Lassiter eased up, thinking maybe—just maybe—McCain was telling the truth for once. Or maybe McCain didn’t know the truth from lies. Lassiter had known men like that, not many, but some.

  “I’ll take your word for now,” he said. “For now, Colonel. First we get the guns—if we get them—and then later well have ourselves another talk.”

  McCain took command again. “You keep saying if we get the guns. Don’t you ever trust anybody?”

  “Do I have any cause to?”

  “I guess not much.”

  Lassiter grinned. “That’s more like it, Mac. I don’t like you much—maybe not at all—but I like you better the way you really are. A real dirty, sneaking, back-stabbing, Irish rat, that is.”

  McCain grinned back at him. “You’re forgetting yourself, Major. Now let’s get those guns.”

  They went outside to review the troops. Lassiter let McCain go first, out of deference for rank, for the other thing, too.

  McCain, sounding like a real Colonel, made a short speech to the men. Lassiter stood behind him, thinking the son of a bitch might have made a pretty good Colonel or even General, if it had been another place and another time. If McCain hadn’t been so long in jails. If being so long in one jail or another hadn’t set the worm to chewing on McCain’s educated brain.

  “On to Ringo Junction, men,” McCain finished. “Once we get those guns in our hands well show the bastards how men can fight.”

  The men cheered, even the Americans drawn up under the command of Colmar and Bannerman. Lassiter had never seen a bunch of men so enthused, and he didn’t know if they should be. They might get the goddamned guns, but a couple of thousand Springfield rifles wasn’t the whole war. He had been just a boy when the farmers and mechanics of the Confederacy marched off to fight the Union, and, with all that spirit, his own included, the Yankees had sunk them in a quicksand of money and an avalanche of supplies.

  The men cheered the rebellion, shouted for Ballard Mackenzie. McCain sent for the old man, and he came out looking noble and confused. McCain raised the old man’s arm, shook it a bit, then sent the great leader back inside. McCain explained that Mackenzie, the spiritual leader of the rebellion, would not be with them at Ringo Junction when the guns arrived. Ballard Mackenzie was too valuable to be exposed to danger of any kind. He mentioned a safe place in the hills.

  When everything was ready, McCain raised his hand, brought it down in a chopping motion and they marched away from Fort Liberté.

  Heading west at first along the old military road that snaked through the hills, away from the fort, then later leaving the road and turning north, they made good time. Lassiter and five of his men rode ahead to scout the country. Colmar had been put in charge of the money sacks, and he stayed in the main column with McCain. Lassiter knew McCain was still trying to make Colmar into a replacement for the dead half-breed.

  It was cold and dry when they started out, and it stayed that way until they camped for the noon meal, out of the wind along the side of a timbered ridge. Lassiter was on his way back to camp when it started to rain; great, slanting sheets of freezing water driven by the wind. It doused the fires and chilled the coffee, but Lassiter was more concerned about the Maxim gun than anything else.

  Ritter, the German, was taking good care of it. The gun was wrapped in a grease-soaked blanket and then covered over with a rubber ground sheet. Lassiter went over to where McCain sat huddled in a dripping blanket, eating cold beans from a can. The Irishman was in great good humor; the rain didn’t bother him a bit.

  “How does it look?” he asked.

  “If there’s any militia out there, they’re pretty well hidden,” Lassiter said. “Bannerman is out there now. I’ll ride out later.”

  “You’re a good man, Lassiter. Too bad you can’t show a real interest in this thing. You could be an important man in this province soon as the fighting’s done and we start to get things organized.”

  Lassiter said he didn’t want to b
e an important man. It was a hell of a place, with the cold rain beating down, to be talking about what a man wanted to do with his life. McCain pushed it, so he said, “I do what I want to do, not what other people think I should.”

  “A real pity,” McCain said. Lassiter thought the Irishman sounded like a trainer about to shoot his favorite racehorse. What McCain didn’t know was that Lassiter was more mule than racehorse: It took more than one bullet to make him he down and die.

  They moved out again, the rain still coming down, and this time, with the wagons bogging down in the mud, the going wasn’t so good. It was still slow for a long time after the rain stopped in mid-afternoon, but the men felt better. They made camp before it got dark, and Lassiter walked a wide perimeter around camp and posted sentries on three-hour watches. Colmar was in charge of the first watch, Lassiter the second, Bannerman the third.

  The wind blew hard during the night, drying the wet ground, chilling the men. By morning everybody but the half-breed trappers from up north were stiff and cold and not too interested in the fight for freedom. After some boiled-black coffee—Lassiter laced his with whiskey—and jerked meat they started off again. Lassiter rode out with his scouts, but the only sign of life was an old trapper who ran into his cabin and barred the door when he saw them coming. The country they went through was hilly and dark-green, thickly timbered in places and then bare and treeless for miles. It was the sort of country that never warmed up or dried out completely, not even in summer.

  It began to rain again, not as heavily as the day before, but it took longer to stop. After it stopped there was a thick mist blowing, and fog in the low places. It was good weather for an ambush and bad weather to fight in. The water dripped slow and steady from the trees they went under, and Lassiter decided again that Canada was a cold, wet, miserable country. It was hard to keep a cigarette lit, and the mist-soaked paper fell apart after a while, spilling tobacco.